CHICAGO (CBS) — Authorities in Kane County have finally solved a cold case dating back 46 years that involved a human skull found during a home renovation project in Batavia in 1978.
The Kane County coroner’s office said the skull has been identified as Esther Granger, a 17-year-old girl who died in Indiana in May 1866 — a year after the end of the Civil War. Authorities believe she died from complications during childbirth.
The mystery was solved by advances in science, most notably extracting DNA from skeletal remains and then tracing it to find relatives.
A couple renovating their home on Wilson Street in Batavia found what appeared to be a human lower jaw in a wall. Police later found a partial skull within the same wall. The bones were sent to Northern Illinois University’s anthropology department, which confirmed that the bones were human and likely dated much further back than 1978.
Kane County Coroner
The skull was later donated to the Batavia Historical Society and remained in the Batavia Depot Museum until 2021. At that point, he was turned over to Batavia police and then to the Kane County coroner in hopes of identifying the remains.
With the help of Texas-based Othram, which specializes in forensic genetic genealogy, the coroner’s office was able to use modern DNA technology to identify the remains.
The Houston-based lab broke its old record when they traced the skull’s DNA to Granger. Before Granger, the longest deceased person they had identified through DNA was a murder victim from 1881.
“There are so many unidentified remains in the United States right now – 40,000 unidentified remains,” Othram Chief Development Officer Kristen Mittleman said in January 2023.
Officials have tracked down Granger’s second great-grandchild, who provided a DNA sample to confirm the identity of her remains.
The great-great-grandson in question, Wayne Svilar, a retired police sergeant from Portland, Oregon. He is happy that his great-great-grandmother is finally at peace.
“And I feel that the sense of closure and the respect that we have shown Esther in this process has been very satisfying to me,” Svilar said.
It is still a mystery how Granger’s remains ended up in Batavia. Kane County Coroner L. Robert Russell said his cold case team’s investigation showed Granger died at age 17. But she didn’t die in Batavia – she came from Indiana and was buried there too.
Russell theorized that the girl might have been the victim of a serious robbery after she died, or that doctors might have purchased her remains at the time of her death to learn about human anatomy.
The city of Batavia paid for Granger’s burial in a cemetery in Lake County, Indiana. Othram, the laboratory in this case also works on several high-profile unsolved murder cases, including the 1982 Tylenol murders in the Chicago area.
